I’ve always have wanted a clean project area on my computer, never managed it though.
I try to keep a space for organization (slack, jira, whatever) and another for the ide, for example. Start working, and pretty soon I need to check an old pr on GitHub, and see it side to side with the ide, next someone sends a link in slack that opens a chrome window which is a doc with links that go into tabs. Hold, I have to hop in zoom for the daily… aaand we’re back at 20 windows and 15 tabs.
I wonder if it’s just the mess imposed by modern workflows. Picturing an engineer decades ago working alone and disconnected in its own office sounds like a dream, but I might just be idealizing it from today’s mindset.
I mean that's the easiest thing for me.
mkdir NewProject
cd NewProject
Nice clean work area. Cleaning my real desk is much more difficult.
Multiple desktops in Windows can help with this. Ctrl+Win Right/Left cursor keys to switch.